1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for discharging a material onto an object. Particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for producing a color filter used for optical devices such as a liquid crystal device, and the like. The present invention also relates to an apparatus and method for manufacturing a liquid crystal device having a color filter. The present invention further relates to an apparatus and method for manufacturing an electroluminescence (EL) device for displaying by using an EL luminescent layer. The present invention further relates to an electronic apparatus manufactured by any one of the above-described methods.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, display devices, such as a liquid crystal device, an electroluminescence device (EL device), and the like have been widely used as display sections of electronic apparatuses, such as a cell phone, a portable computer, etc. Additionally, in recent years, a full-color display made by display devices has been increasingly used. A full-color display of a liquid crystal device can be made by, for example, transmitting light, which is modulated by a liquid crystal layer, through a color filter. The color filter can include dot-shaped color filter elements of R (red), G (green) and B (blue) which are formed in a predetermined arrangement such as a stripe, delta, or mosaic arrangement on the surface of a substrate of glass, plastic, or the like.
In a full-color display of an EL device, dot-shaped EL luminescent layers of R (red), G (green) and B (blue) colors are provided in a predetermined arrangement on electrodes, which are formed in any desired arrangement, on the surface of a substrate made of, for example, glass, plastic, or the like. The voltage applied to these electrodes is controlled for each pixel to emit light of a desired color from each pixel, thereby performing a full-color display.
It is conventionally known that a photolithography process can be used for patterning the filter elements of each of the R, G, and B colors of the color filter, or patterning the pixels of each of the R, G, and B colors of the EL device. However, the use of the photolithography process has the problem of complicating the process, and increasing the cost due to the high consumption of each color material and photoresist, etc.
In order to solve the problem, a method has been proposed, in which a filter material, an EL luminescent material, or the like is discharged in a dot shape to form a dot-arrangement filament or EL luminescent layer, or the like.
Consideration will now be given to a case in which as shown in FIG. 22(b), a plurality of dot-shaped filter elements 303 are formed by an ink jet method in each of a plurality of panel areas 302, which are set on the surface of a large-area substrate of glass, plastic, or the like, i.e., a so-called mother board 301 shown in FIG. 22(a). In this case, during several times (twice in the case shown in FIG. 22(b)) of main scanning with an ink jet head 306 having a nozzle row 305 including a plurality of nozzles 304 arranged in a row as shown in FIG. 22(c) for each panel area 302, as shown by arrows A1 and A2 in FIG. 22(b), an ink, i.e., a filter material, is discharged from the plurality of nozzles to form the filter elements 303 at desired positions.
The filter elements 303 of each of the R, G, and B colors are formed in an appropriate arrangement, such as a stripe, delta or mosaic arrangement. Therefore, for ink discharge from the ink jet head 306, the ink jet head 306 for discharging each of the R, G, and B colors is previously provided for each of the three colors R, G and B so that the ink jet heads 306 are successively used to form an arrangement of the three colors of R, G and B on the mother board 301, as shown in FIG. 22(b).
The number of the nozzles provided on the ink jet head 306 is generally about 160 to 180. The mother board 301 generally has a larger area than the ink jet head 306. Therefore, in forming the filter elements 303 on the surface of the mother board 301 by using the ink jet head 306, the ink jet head 306 must be moved several times on the mother board 301 by main scanning while being moved relative to the mother board 301 by sub-scanning to discharge ink during each time of main scanning, drawing a pattern.
However, this method has the problem of requiring a long drawing time, i.e., a long time for producing a color filter, because of the large number of times of scanning of the mother board 301 with the ink jet head. In order to solve this problem, the applicant proposed a method in Japanese Application No. 11-279752 in which a plurality of heads are linearly arranged and supported by a supporting member to increase the substantial nozzle number.
By using this method, for example, as shown in FIG. 23(a), a plurality of heads 306, e.g., six heads 306, are linearly supported by a supporting member 307, and a main scanning can be performed numerous times, as shown by arrows A1, A2, . . . with movement of the supporting member 307 by sub-scanning in the sub-scanning direction Y, to selectively discharge ink from each of nozzles 304 during each time of main scanning. This method can supply the ink to a wide area by one time of main scanning, thereby certainly shortening the time required for producing a color filter.